Logic Conditionals, Supervenience, and Selection Tasks
This addresses a foundational issue in cognitive science and logic for understanding human reasoning, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing theories of supervenience and selection tasks.
The paper tackles the problem that classic logic conditionals sometimes fail to simplify conceptualizations, arguing that supervenience is necessary for compression. It offers an alternative explanation for human performance in Wason's selection tasks, linking it to compression ability rather than logical necessity.
Principles of cognitive economy would require that concepts about objects, properties and relations should be introduced only if they simplify the conceptualisation of a domain. Unexpectedly, classic logic conditionals, specifying structures holding within elements of a formal conceptualisation, do not always satisfy this crucial principle. The paper argues that this requirement is captured by supervenience, hereby further identified as a property necessary for compression. The resulting theory suggests an alternative explanation of the empirical experiences observable in Wason's selection tasks, associating human performance with conditionals on the ability of dealing with compression, rather than with logic necessity.